Free Souls (Book Three of the Mindjack Trilogy) Page 11

  “You know,” he said, peering at my hanging head, “it was always you who should be leading them, not me. From the beginning, I’ve known that was true.”

  Even now, Julian wanted me to step up and stand by his side. His judgment was clouded, obviously, by the feelings he had for me, but it was tremendously sweet. Still, he wasn’t thinking it through.

  “I can’t even keep the people I love safe, Julian,” I said. “My dad is in the Detention Center, which is bad enough, but my mom and Xander are also lost somewhere. The Fronters released them, but I can’t reach my mom on her phone.” I paused to clear the closing up of my throat. “I couldn’t lead them out of a paper bag. I never meant for any of this to happen. All I’ve ever wanted was to keep them safe.”

  “I know,” he said, gently. “Which is precisely why it should have been you leading us all along.”

  I frowned, shaking my head. He wasn’t even making sense now. And he had a kind of glow about him that seemed at odds with the direness of our situation.

  “I need you by my side, Kira.” It was a simple statement, and I flashed back to when he had said it before, at the Mediation Center. “Right now the JFA needs us both,” he continued. “Besides, I’ve been thinking. There may be a way we can stop Vellus and get everyone safely back as well. Including your family.”

  My eyebrows rose. How did this boy always manage to find hope in the darkest of situations?

  He smiled down at me. “Are you with me?”

  There was no question in my heart. Whatever idea Julian had, I was in one hundred percent.

  I mustered a small smile. “I’m standing on your freezing-cold roof, aren’t I?”

  He grinned, grabbed my hand, and towed me toward the stairwell.

  “This whole revolutionary thing,” Ava said, “has a certain odor that I didn’t expect.”

  Odor was a generous term. The tunnel stank of mildew and countless small dead things. After a night of fitful sleep and a rash of tactical planning early this morning, I was now marching alongside Ava through a thirty-foot-high sewage tunnel a couple of hundred feet below Jackertown. Our helmet lamps cast beams that were quickly swallowed by the inky darkness, barely reaching the crew ahead of us: Julian, Myrtle, Hinckley, and seven of Hinckley’s military jackers. Technically the tunnel wasn’t for sewage, just storm runoff. This far underground, the earth warmed the bedrock walls and kept the trickle of water that ran along the bottom from freezing.

  But that didn’t help with the smell.

  “You could go back.” I snuck a sideways look at Ava so I wouldn’t flash her with my helmet-mounted light, but her face was too shadowed to read. “It’s not too late. Sasha’s going to be really upset if he finds out you went on a mission without him.”

  “Would you stay home?” She took something from the pocket of her cargo pants and bound her long blond hair at the back of her combat helmet. “If you were in my position, wouldn’t you do anything you could to bring home the man you loved?”

  It wasn’t a fair question. Ava knew all I’d done to try to save Raf. “It’s not the same. Sasha made Julian promise. You know how he feels about his promises.”

  “I know,” Ava said lightly as if this barely concerned her. “He should have checked with me first.”

  I shook my head but smiled under the cover of dark, then glanced up, shining my lamp on the roughhewn rock above us. Up ahead in the vast darkness of the tunnel, an access portal would lead to the surface somewhere beyond the perimeter of Jackertown. Julian said the portal might be marked by emergency lighting, but we couldn’t count on it. I kept checking for a hole in the ceiling, hoping we hadn’t missed it by mistake.

  “Can you reach the station yet?” I asked Ava.

  She slowed but kept walking. “We’re almost to the perimeter shield. A little farther and I’ll be able to survey the station.” The target of our mission—the Hawthorne water pumping station—was only a mile outside the perimeter. Which was outside my reach, but Ava should have no problem once we were past the shield.

  I nodded and picked up the pace to join Julian. He trailed behind Hinckley and his men, their helmet lights bobbing and collectively illuminating the mist that clung to the walls and drifted along the floor. Over Anna’s objections, Julian had insisted on joining the mission. She had stayed behind to maintain chain-of-command, sending Hinckley in her place. He had suggested leaving a copy of my chat-cast recording with Anna; I agreed, although the idea of her watching it made me squirm almost as much as when I made it.

  “Hey,” I said to Julian when I reached him. “Ava says she’ll be able to give us surveillance soon.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “We’re making good time, which will give us room to plan once we get a read on the station.”

  Julian’s plan was simple and dangerous: take over the water pumping station, hold it hostage, and negotiate with Vellus to release the JFA prisoners at the Detention Center including my dad and Sasha and anyone else illegally detained there. My mom and Xander were still missing—I’d already asked Ava to search Jackertown, but they weren’t inside the perimeter. Once my dad was free, we would look for my mom and Xander together.

  Julian dropped his voice so it didn’t echo in the tunnel. “I wish you could have talked Ava out of coming.”

  “I’m not exactly the poster girl for that discussion,” I said. “I wish you had told Myrtle to stay behind; she’s in no shape for this.”

  “Touché,” he said. “Except that Myrtle is vital to the mission.”

  Myrtle had recovered somewhat from the trauma with the Fronters, but Anna and I both thought she should have stayed behind. Julian had won that fight, too, saying Myrtle was key to the PR part of the mission. Which I still didn’t understand.

  “What odds do you put on Vellus agreeing to turn over the prisoners?” I stepped sideways to avoid a patch of slimy green moss on the floor. Julian did the same and then we met back in the middle.

  “The mere fact that we escaped his perimeter fence will give Vellus pause,” Julian said. “We won’t need to assassinate or scribe him if we can blunt the effect of his actions. Jackers are still coming from all over the country to Jackertown, even with the barricade up. We’re entrenched and we have strength in numbers—Vellus hasn’t resorted to military assault because quarantining us is a much better play with the public. This isn’t only about Jackertown, Kira, or even Illinois. The entire country is watching what happens here. If we can take the station with a minimum of casualties…” I raised my eyebrows, but it was too dark for him to see. “…then we’ll be more sympathetic in the public eye. We need to win the hearts of mindreaders if we’re going to survive long enough to make it to the tipping point.”

  “The tipping point?”

  “The point where mindreaders have to accept us. Jackers don’t have to be the majority—although that day will come as well—we just need a majority of mindreaders to believe that locking up jackers in the Detention Center is unacceptable. That’s why you’re one of my most powerful weapons, Kira.”

  “Me?” I smirked. “You mean you don’t keep me around for my charm, good looks, and freaky ability to run faster than a cheetah?”

  He grinned. “Those are rather attractive features as well.” Then he got serious. “The reason Vellus wants you is the same reason I don’t want you anywhere near him. You are still the original sympathetic face of the jackers. People remember you rescuing those changelings, Kira, a brilliant piece of PR that I couldn’t have dreamed up on my best day.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “PR. That’s absolutely what I was thinking at the time.”

  “I know it’s not.” Even in the dark, I could see him roll his eyes. “But in one act, you did something I’ve been struggling to do ever since.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, not following him entirely.

  “You humanized jackers.” He paused, holding back from saying something more, which piqued my curiosity. Julian was rarely stymied for words. His helmet
light made a steady spot on the back of Hinckley’s head ahead of us. “You made us seem human,” he said quietly, “but you were more than that. I watched the tru-cast like everyone else that day. You were brave and selfless and full of the determination that those changelings had a right to exist. You were willing to do everything and anything to bring them home.” He dipped his head and peeked a sideways look at me. “You inspired me, Kira. At a time when I really needed it. And that was before I even knew you.”

  The weight of his words held my breath captive in my chest. “And now,” I said softly, “you know what a mess I really am.”

  “And now,” he said, looking straight forward again, “you make it very difficult for me to be objective in my duties.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  He smiled into the dark. “But, once upon a time, a girl on a tru-cast showed me that some causes are worth risking everything for. And I wasn’t the only one. She showed it to the entire world. It’s the very opposite of what Vellus says we are. He wants to dehumanize us, lock us up, make us appear too dangerous to set free. And as long as the public believes that is acceptable, we are fighting a losing battle. Which is why it’s important for us to secure the water station—but with minimum casualties. Especially if we’re going to threaten to cut off the water supply to the suburbs.”

  I let out the breath I was holding, glad we were back in safe territory again. “I’m thinking water-terrorism isn’t making us sympathetic to anyone.” I was half-joking, but I could just imagine the reaction of Raf’s family to jackers turning off their water. Mama Santos would have a fit.

  “Which is why,” Julian said, “a grandma who was recently tagged by Fronters is the perfect person to make demands.”

  Myrtle would make a compelling spokesperson, I had to admit. Plus, shutting off the water wouldn’t really endanger anyone in the suburbs. It would be inconvenient, but they had other ways of getting water. After all, they didn’t have the National Guard surrounding them with a fence.

  “I’m not sure we’ll have time to make demands,” I said. “It won't take long for Vellus to redeploy the National Guardsmen from Jackertown to Hawthorne. We’re just not that far away.”

  “Once we have control of the water station,” Julian said, “we’ll be expecting their counterattack. Like the power station, the water station is practically a bunker, so it won’t be easy for them.” He paused to let me step over a pooled clump of slime. “Vellus won’t want an extended military battle in the middle of Chicago. Even if he doesn’t agree to all our demands, we need to hold the water station. It doesn’t just feed water to the suburbs, but to Jackertown as well. It’s like the power station—we won’t last through a siege without it.”

  “So we’re not just bargaining for the prisoners.”

  “No, this is about fighting to survive.” He tipped his head toward me but kept the light from shining in my eyes. “But you've always known those were the stakes, haven’t you?”

  I nodded. Vellus’s move to quarantine us in our own homes was confirmation of everything Julian had been predicting: Vellus planned to eliminate us. While we were still few in number, he could quarantine us, and if we died of malnutrition or thirst or disease, Vellus could claim he hadn’t actually killed anyone.

  It was completely evil, but also slightly genius. Which was a pretty fair description of Vellus.

  One of the head lamps in front of us shone up on the ceiling, spotlighting the access portal. A vertical tunnel had been carved in the rock, and a very long ladder climbed up through it. My tactical mind protested the idea of climbing up that hole one at a time. If anyone was expecting us at the top, it would be easy to pick us off. I reached up to the surface, but there was no one there. The water station was still out of my reach.

  Ava caught up to us. “There’s a building with a disruptor shield topside and about a half mile to the south.”

  “That’s Hawthorne.” Julian had one foot on the first ladder rung when Ava fluttered a hand to stop him.

  “Wait,” she said. “There are guards posted outside the pumping station. Two with anti-jacker helmets. I can barely sense them moving against the stationary background of the shield.”

  “That seems like a lot of security for a water station,” I said.

  Julian frowned. “They must have realized it’s a critical water-supply point for Jackertown. Or maybe they beefed up security after we took the electrical station? Hard to say. Maybe they were planning on cutting off the water to Jackertown even sooner than I thought.” He started climbing the ladder. “We need to get eyes up top.”

  I wished he had let someone else go first. I tucked in behind him, and we all single-filed up the ladder. I couldn’t sense any blank spots of anti-jacker helmets in the range of my reach, just a few demens floating around topside. We were still deep in the no-man’s-land of the city. When we reached the top, we spilled out of the hole in the ground like spiders crawling out of a drain, all black-garbed and heavily armed. The ultralites and bulletproof vests kept us warm against the crisp morning air, but the bright winter sunshine made me squint.

  We trotted forward in a crouched run. I pulled to the front of the group with Hinckley, and Julian fell to the back with Ava. The streets were wide and the buildings low, a few stories high, without the narrow alleyways and hiding spots of Jackertown. Sneaking up on the water station might be a problem. While we were still a block away, I flung my hand out to catch Hinckley in the chest, stopping him and our entire entourage.

  I brushed Hinckley’s mind. I didn’t expect our voices to carry down the block, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Take two of your men for reconnaissance. Hinckley nodded and motioned to two of his hulking military jackers.

  Dart guns only, I linked a parting thought to him. Julian’s orders.

  Hinckley frowned but didn’t protest. Their thick black boots made no sound as they crept forward. Behind us, Julian appeared to be having a mind-link conversation with Myrtle, probably going over her role once we were inside. I didn’t like it—she looked more shriveled than normal, the oversized flak jacket hanging loose around her body—but I could see Julian’s point about her being a sympathetic face.

  I brushed Myrtle’s rocklike mindbarrier, wanting to join the conversation. Even though she relaxed her mindbarrier, I still had to shove hard to make it through. Her lilac mindscent was almost overpowering.

  What do you make of these guards out in front of the pumping station? I asked her. I could never sense Julian in someone else’s mind, but they should both know the question was directed at him.

  I don’t want you using your fast-twitch ability this time, Kira. Julian’s voice echoed in Myrtle’s mind. It may take time to secure the plant. I don’t want your blowback to hit in the middle of the battle.

  He had a point there.

  Hinckley returned and the set of his jaw didn’t bode well. As he linked in, Myrtle bore the party in her head fairly well.

  It’s not looking good, boss, Hinckley thought. There are at least four guards around the perimeter—we haven’t covered the back—and fencing in addition to the shield. The front gate is the only way in.

  There have to be more inside, too, I thought. Why are they defending this thing like it’s the Pentagon?

  Julian’s hand rubbed his chin. They must have known we were coming.

  How could they? I asked. We just thought up this plan yesterday.

  Julian shook his head. Maybe they don’t want a repeat of the power station embarrassment.

  I nodded. Maybe.

  In any event, Hinckley’s thoughts rang in Myrtle’s mind, that makes this a lot more tactically challenging. Unless you lift the no-casualties restriction, Julian. I have a few munitions Jameson is itching to try.

  Jameson—the name was familiar. I didn’t personally know all Hinckley’s troops, but I remembered Jameson breaking down the door of the power station.

  Not that I wouldn’t enjoy seeing Jameson use his expl
osives skills, Julian thought with a smirk, but that’s not going to work for the politics of the situation. Taking the plant is only the first step. We need to keep our objective in mind: getting the prisoners out of the Detention Center. Plus, I don’t want to blow up Jackertown’s water supply.

  Hinckley nodded, but he looked like Julian’s restrictions had put him in a box one size too small.

  Maybe I can help, I linked in.

  Kira. Julian crossed his arms over his black flak jacket. I told you, I don’t want—

  I held up my hand to cut him off. You’ll like this plan, Julian. I’ll be on the support team this time. You, on the other hand, will probably need to be on the assault force. Which isn’t the best of plans, but… I counted heads in our group. We might not have enough people otherwise.

  Julian grinned. And your plan is?

  I tipped my head to Hinckley. Our dart guns are effective at three hundred feet, right? He nodded. The buildings surrounding the station—are they within that range?

  He pushed an image into Myrtle’s mind so we could all see. It was the layout of the buildings surrounding the water pumping station that he and his team had just reconnoitered.

  The buildings are within range of our dart guns, Hinckley thought, but even if we take out the standing guards all at once, we’ll still have to penetrate the station itself. They’ll pick us off one at a time as we come through the gate. He glanced at Julian. And those are not dart rifles they’re carrying.

  If you had suppressive fire, I thought, and some kind of shield, you could storm the gate all the way to the building. You won’t have time to blow the door, but what about the windows on the ground floor?